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E-mail StoryFriendship shines at The Shindig
Outreach based on getting to know kids
| Friday, Feb 8 2008 7:12 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Feb 8 2008 7:12 PM
“Getting stoned is biblical” is the motto Mark Lamas lives by. No, he doesn’t mean smoking pot, which is a pastime often associated with the radical-skateboarding, body-art-flashing, indie-rock-thumping subculture to which he belongs.
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The Shindig skateboarding on Thursday.
Nearly 100 Oildale and Bakersfield skaters attend the Thursday night skating event, The Shindig, sponsored by The Garden Community Church. Attendees are provided with hot chocolate, nachos and live music.
What the 22-year-old means is that he’d like to be as fervent a Christian as Stephen, the apostle who, at the end of Chapter 7 in the New Testament’s book of Acts, is stoned to death for professing his belief in Christ.
“That’s what my faith is: Having my life completely devoted to God,” said Lamas, who currently has a clerical job at an electrical company but hopes someday to become a nurse practitioner and open up a free clinic for the poor. He has combined his love for Jesus with his passion for skateboarding and punk rock music in a weekly free community event for youths called The Shindig.
THE PARK
Thursday nights from about 6:30 to 9 p.m., the well-lit and smoothly paved parking lot on the corner of 20th and O streets downtown is transformed into a skate park with ramps, rails, skate boxes and up-ledges — wooden platforms, some square, others wedge-shaped, with stunt rails down their long edges — and a pyramid-shaped wooden-ramp-with-rail structure.
On a recent Thursday, about 100 preteens and teenagers, mostly boys, braved the winter chill to enjoy a couple of hours at this put-up-and-take-down skate arena at The Gate, an alcohol-free concert hall affiliated with the nearby The Garden Community Church, where Lamas worships.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t have anything like this,” he said.
“A lot of these kids are poor, and it’s a place where they don’t feel like, ‘I’ve got to have money to get in.’”
Lamas began The Shindig at Cornerstone Church on Calloway Drive when he was 18.
He moved it to The Garden, which hosted The Shindig from October 2005 until the church repaved The Gate’s parking lot and upgraded its lights last fall so the kids would have a better place to skate, according to The Garden’s associate pastor, Rob Allison. And then the skateboarding “exploded,” Allison said.
THE KIDS
“We were skating in front of Rabobank and we seen the lights and we came here,” said Ray Garcia, 10, a fourth-grader at Colonel Nichols Elementary School, about how he came to know of The Shindig. He’s been there about a half-dozen times with friends.
“This is the best skate park ever made,” said 12-year-old Brandon Wolford of Beardsley Junior High School.
“And by a church, too,” Ray remarked.
To which Brandon exclaimed, “Thank God!” He said he doesn’t mind the short prayer offered every Shindig night before a snack of nachos and hot chocolate is served.
“It pretty much helps everybody,” he said. “It just boosts their confidence.”
Robert Rockholt, 13, Brandon’s best friend, also from Beardsley, agreed. “I think it’s cool. I’m a Christian and I really like that they pray. It makes me feel safer.”
The seventh-graders usually ride the GET bus from Oildale to The Shindig, and Brandon’s mom picks them up. Robert said his parents don’t mind that he’s out skating on a school night as long as he doesn’t get hurt.
Lamas said parents or guardians must sign a liability release form before kids can skate. So far, however, there have been no serious accidents, he said.
“I think it’s excellent if somebody can put something on for the community like this,” said Samuel Bautista, of east Bakersfield, as he arrived to pick up his 16-year-old son, Niko, a 10th-grader at Centennial High School who was skating at The Shindig for the second time with friends.
Bautista said combining sports and music at the event was a positive thing: Three bands were playing inside The Gate that night, and kids sometimes went in to listen to the music while taking a break from skating. Like everything else about The Shindig, band performances are donated.
“I’ve never heard of any fights going on,” Bautista said. “It’s kids being free. I back that up 100 percent.” He added, “And there’s no hassle from the police.”
CHANGING LIVES
“We’re pretty nonaggressive as far as getting in their face” with a religious message, Lamas said about The Shindig’s outreach approach toward the youths it serves. He believes in befriending them instead. “Knowing them is actually a big part of speaking the Gospel without words,” he said.
But he does hand out donated Bibles from time to time to those who want them, he said. He also hosts raffles of skateboards and other paraphernalia donated by local shops such as Outer Limits downtown, owned by Joey Witt, 40, whom Lamas called “definitely the most generous guy I’ve ever met.”
Witt said he has been donating goods at least once a month to The Shindig for the last two years.
“I just kind of want to give back to the skateboarding community,” he said. “Kids don’t have a lot of money, and when they get a free board it creates a lot of positive energy.”
Witt said that, contrary to societal stereotypes, kids who skate are not “potheads” and are actually more likely to stay off drugs. “They’re more focused on skateboarding,” he said, which, especially when kids are doing hard tricks, becomes a much more strenuous and dangerous sport than, for example, basketball, and therefore requires commitment and concentration. “A workout like that, you’re not going to fall into bad stuff,” he said.
Doug Norwood, 15, a sophomore at Centennial High, said he used to drink, getting his alcohol at parties, until about a year ago. That’s when he started going to The Shindig and then to church at The Garden.
“This and church changed my life,” he said. Now he volunteers in the kitchen on Shindig nights. He also creates song lists on his iPod, brings the music to the Thursday events and pumps it through large speakers for skaters’ enjoyment.
“He’s giving the kids an opportunity to have something positive,” Witt said of Lamas. “I like what he’s doing, and I believe in what he’s doing.”
Lamas said his wife, Leah, who is currently working on getting her teaching credential, tutors some of the Shindig kids who say they need help with school. Ideally, he would like to expand the Shindig idea to other underserved and impoverished areas like Arvin and Lamont he said.
“I really and truly am trying to be their friend,” he said of the kids. And that, he believes, falls into God’s plan for them: “I definitely feel that these kids are where they’re supposed to be.”
Go & Do
WHAT: The Shindig — skateboarding, free food and live music.
WHEN: Thursdays from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
WHERE: 2010 O St. (on the parking lot of The Gate concert hall, corner of O and 20th streets downtown)
WHO: Open to all skateboarders, especially youths.
ADMISSION: Free, but a liability waiver must be signed in front of a witness by a parent or guardian before anyone is allowed to participate.
INFORMATION: www.myspace.com/theshindigrocks or theshindig777@gmail.com. Bands that want to showcase their music for free are encouraged to participate.